Hollow
by J.A. Carlton
Summary: If This was your curse... could you escape it?
1. Chapter 1

HOLLOW

By: J.A. Carlton

_Just keep walking Alex, pretend you don't see them and they'll leave you alone. God I hate this…_she sighed forcing her eyes not to linger on the scene to her left. She was trying not to see the old man at the bus stop across the street sucking on his cigarette, trying even harder not to see the creature that he fed with each pull on the damned thing. She didn't want to see these things but she couldn't remember a time when she hadn't. Odd thing though was that she couldn't remember it ever bothering her the way it had been doing for the last few years. _Yeah…well time does go by doesn't it?_ she thought and tasted a faint bitterness in the back of her throat as she continued down the street she walked twice a day, five days a week for the last four years. She preferred the direction she was headed in. Home.

Her apartment of the last four years was a third floor walk-up with creaky hardwood floors and a penchant for huge feathery legged centipedes, but it was hers. There was no one else to come in at all hours of the night, bringing along whatever disaster whether human or other-worldly, with them. No despondent or broken families, no broken people with life stealing creatures hanging around them, daring them to take another breath, another drink, another toke, another shot, another anything. Nothing to laugh and clap with dark twisted features and sinister glee when the blows fell and blood flowed. No one in her immediate sphere of knowledge whose pain would beg unknowingly for her solace, that which she had to give though doing so, she was certain, fed her own little life stealing creature.

_So good to be home…_she sighed internally as she did every work day. She turned the locks more out of habit than anything else. She'd decided a long time ago that on a third floor walk-up, you could pretty much leave your doors unlocked and you'd never be bothered, at least in this part of town, and in this building. Off came the shoes, 'woosh' went the purse sliding across the floor, coming to rest against the side of the couch, snag went her sock against that one little nail in the floorboard that always said 'welcome home' in its own twisted little way. She didn't mind though, it never bit her foot, just liked to nibble on her socks, and in doing so, it forced her to buy new ones regularly instead of wearing them till there was nothing left.

Off to the fridge, gripping the slick floor with her toes, twist open a beer, skate back to the living room and plop onto the couch. Just a drop of beer leaps onto her shirt as she arranges the pillow behind her back and smiles with the remote in hand.

Alexandra Bentley's graduation present to herself was this apartment. She'd started her job as Assistant to the Purchasing Director the day after graduating college. No vacation necessary, just a paycheck that would buy her some level of peace of mind. She looked at the clock on the VCR, flipped the channel to one of her favorite shows and hunkered down wondering why she'd agreed to go and meet the girls tonight.

_If you don't accept an invitation once in a while they stop asking…_ she reminded herself and frowned. She liked the people she worked with, the girls were all pretty nice and they all managed to get along surprisingly well. Still, every now and again, as was bound to happen in an office and factory full of women, sometimes things were said that were maybe not so nice.

While the fictional lives of a Reverend's insanely extended family played in the background, the trials and tribulations of their lives neatly packaged in forty four minute blocks for easy consumption, (which was one of the reasons she really enjoyed the show), one little comment circled Alex's head like a vulture waiting for the meat to rot. The worst part was that there was nothing she could say. She couldn't dispute the observation, and she sure couldn't explain it, all she could do was sit by and watch the twisted little figure at her co-workers side suck out the energy behind the words, snacking on whatever had prompted the woman to say them in the first place.

Alex and Becky had been sitting in the break room with Sarah. They'd all just finished lunch and were tossing around the idea of going for a walk around the block when Sarah started moaning again about how tired she was.

"…it's Mikey, he just doesn't sleep at night… and with this cold of his, he's just up pretty much every hour on the hour…" she sighed.

"I don't know why you don't just have Brian take care of him… he's not working right now, you are… you need your sleep," Alex shook her head after meeting Sarah's eyes, "Sorry… why don't you just sit back and put your feet up for a while, Becky and I'll go… you rest," she suggested rising to her feet and sweeping her lunch wrappings into a ball and tossing them into the trash can from across the room. She folded her plastic grocery bag and stuck it into her pocket.

"Jeez man why don't you invest in a lunch box if you insist on bringing your own?" Becky asked having watched the same lunchtime routine for four years. "I'll get you one for Christmas…"

"No thanks… the bags come with the groceries… it's fine," Alex shook her head and looked at her co-worker, "You ready?"

Becky nodded and looked at Sarah, "You sure you don't want to come?"

"Nah… I'm just gonna close my eyes a while… wake me when you get back okay?"

"Okay," Becky nodded.

Then they'd rounded the corner, turning down a lovely little tree lined street where the green-gold fluttering light never failed to shout, "surprise! I'm here!" and made Alex sigh with something unfulfilled. Every time she did though, she wondered if there was some dark wrinkly little bastard sucking the life out of her sigh. _I don't care…_ she remembered thinking, _it's beautiful here… if I died with this kind of beauty in my eyes I'd be happy…_

"That was a little cold Alex. You know Brian's been looking for a job…" Becky said, pulling Alex from the joy of the sun-latticed street, drawing her vision to the constantly shifting black-gray thing that never let Alex get a good look at it. Not that she really wanted to see it that clearly anyway, but it could get nauseating if she tried to pin it down.

She turned her eyes straight ahead, "Yeah, he's _still_ _looking_ for a job… not _working_, she's the one drawing the paycheck, she's the one supporting him while he joins the bar's softball team… I'm sorry I thought he blew his back out…" she stopped herself, they'd had this conversation too many times, with each other and with Sarah, "…all I'm saying is that he should be the one getting up in the night and letting Sarah sleep… isn't that what partners do? Support and help each other? She's supporting him, he should be supporting her with the parenting…"

"You know that, and I know that…so does Sarah but you don't have to keep bringing it up… don't you think she's beat down enough? I mean they've already been forced back to her Mom and Dad's house… that can't be easy…" Becky preached.

"You're right… it's her life… I shouldn't say anything," Alex blunt cut the reprimand. She couldn't take the gluttonous satisfaction on that things' face any longer.

Becky had looked at her then, "Y'know sometimes I don't get you Alex…"

"What?" she'd asked knowing what would happen, what she'd see.

"I know you don't like that Brian doesn't help her but how do you just turn your back on it? How do you just shut it off? You do that all the time… whenever a subject gets hot you throw a bucket of water on it… it's like you just don't really feel anything… like none of it makes a difference to you really…"

At that Alex stopped, took a breath and looked her co-worker dead in the eye, "It used to matter Beck… a looong time ago," she'd smirked then and they'd continued their walk in silence but the damage had been done. The beautiful fluttering golden light that brought her small moments of pleasure had been dimmed, filmed over with a pall of gray. Becky had a way of ripping the pleasure out of the day for anyone she chose to. The sad part was that she did it without conscious effort or malice. It was just her way sometimes.

--

please R&R

THanks


	2. Chapter 2

Hollow: chpt 2

Where we left off:

At that Alex stopped, took a breath and looked her co-worker dead in the eye, "It used to matter Beck… a looong time ago," she'd smirked then and they'd continued their walk in silence but the damage had been done. The beautiful fluttering golden light that brought her small moments of pleasure had been dimmed, filmed over with a pall of gray. Becky had a way of ripping the pleasure out of the day for anyone she chose to. The sad part was that she did it without conscious effort or malice. It was just her way sometimes.

------

"Come on! We've all been up there already! You have to… seriously…you've been looking through the book all night…" Melanie reached under the book and drew out the slip of paper Alex had slid under it more than an hour ago.

"Mel… I can't…" Alex protested and watched the walking ray of sunshine rise to her feet with a smile that could make the flowers follow her.

"Yes, you can," she grinned sliding her own shot in front of Alex before heading toward the D.J.

"Oh boy…" Alex sighed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath as the wrinkly black and gray figure that leaned nonchalantly against Becky looked pointedly and directly into her eyes. Still, at least it didn't leave its perch and stick its ever shifting face into hers.

_I've got my own that's having a feast right now don't I you little bastard? Tell me something I don't know! _she thought at the beast that seemed bored with her accusation, as if it could hear her. _Maybe they can… I don't know… and I don't really care either… so up yours ass hole!_ she thought at the thing just as the music faded and everyone clapped for the poor drunk woman who thought she could sing Whitney Houston.

"Alright… let's hear it once more time for Tanya… " the D.J. coaxed as Melanie returned to the table and handed Alex the mic just as her name was called, "… alright let's get a nice big hand for Alex… come on up here Alex…"

Alex took the mic in one hand, slammed the shot with the other, then slugged back several long swallows of her beer and smiled shaking her head as Mel led the cheers from the table. Alex glanced at the D.J. doing her best to avoid noticing the four demons that clung to him. She stood directly before the spotlights and closed her eyes. She nodded when he asked, "Ready?" and began the song she'd chosen.

Music had always given Alex solace of her own and she knew well what kinds of songs she could sing and which were best left to others to muddle through. With her eyes closed the opening notes of Poison's Something To Believe In, put her into the drivers' seat of her car with an open road before her, and she sang.

Once the song was over, her knees stopped shaking as she put the mic back in the stand and returned to the table where her friends were smiling and cheering her on. Mel waved the waitress over and pointed at Alex.

"You did great… see? No one threw anything at you..." she teased as the beer and shot were replaced.

"Thanks… and thank God that's over…"

"We could always put in Long Way To Happy for you…" Becky tormented playfully from a few seats down.

"No, thanks… I'll stick to keeping that one in the car… besides it's probably not even out for Karoake yet…" she smiled and saw movement on the floor at her right. She looked down and shook her head, she'd fallen for it again. No matter how long she lived she knew she'd never stop looking when some creature ran through her field of vision. Even the Wee People as she called them, lumping Sidhe, Leprechauns, various thought forms, fetches, and any other small creature that moved unknown, and for the most part, unseen in the world of men.

Most of the Wee People tended to leave her alone, they knew she could see them but they also knew enough to know that she wouldn't acknowledge them. To openly acknowledge their presence was to open the door further and they could sense her door was already as open as it could get. It was the ever-shifting gray-black 'meanies' as she used to call them, _Yeah, well I know they're demons… I'm just not really sure which kind, or if they're all just peoples' personal demons… _that actively tormented her, trying to get God only knew what out of her. She'd never seen any of them hanging around her, not in the mirror, not in the reflection of a glass or any other reflective surface, so she often wondered if her own little demons kept themselves invisible to her or if it was a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees, in a manner of speaking.

_Oh yeah…it's time to go home… when I start thinking about this crap…_she thought.

"What kind of crap?" Mel asked leaning her ear toward Alex's mouth.

_Did I say that out loud?_ she wondered, "Sorry Mel, just thinking out loud…" she grinned. Melanie was a pleasure to hang out with. She was one of the few people Alexandra Bentley had ever encountered that had the Golden Halo that seemed to repel the demons. Wouldn't let 'em get through for anything, and Alex wondered if it was because of her nature or her nurture that it was so. "I think I need to go home… I'm getting a little buzzed…"

"Good! You're supposed to!" Mel shouted as one of the regulars belted out an impressive rendition of Open Arms on stage.

Alex nodded smiling and sat back with her drink in hand. _I'll hang for another half hour…_ she thought and felt a shiver cascade up her spine as a cackle that no one else would be able to hear arose from across the tavern. Through the smoky darkness the sight that filled her eyes was one that never failed to make her queasy. A drawn and ill used woman with meth-mouth and sagging skin sat clutching the bar, her chest heaving, while her cigarette bobbed up and down in the corner of her mouth with each rasping breath she took. She sat there dying, Alex knew she was going to keel over any second, and two demons hovered over her each with a smoky sinister claw hooked into the tattered and grayed remnants of her soul, vying for ownership or perhaps just for a piece of it. Alex wasn't sure which and she didn't really care as her feet picked her up and carried her halfway across the tavern, weaving through the suddenly far too loud crowd. She knew there was nothing she could do to stop this from happening. Once the demons had their hooks into a person's soul there was no going back, it wasn't as if it was the body simply taking a break. This was the soul having been sucked dry, there was nothing left to animate the body even if the shell could be saved, except in those rare cases when a demon was strong enough to reanimate the body itself. Those were creatures that actually frightened Alex. The other entities made her nervous, uncomfortable, and occasionally nauseous, but when she came across a demon in a human suit she had nightmares for days. Thankfully that didn't happen very often as a rule. _Yeah but I've seen it happening more and more often over the last few years… more with the soul trapped inside with the demon too…_then the woman fell.

The clatter of her stool throwing her to the floor was fairly drowned out for the stereo system, but the people surrounding her, also courting and supporting their own demons were regulars as well, and apparently this wasn't the first time this particular woman had fallen off her barstool. They didn't realize it would the last time. So, thinking her completely inebriated they did what most jaded barflies do when someone goes down. They began to clap.

Alex dodged through the people and knelt at her side as the demons drew what was left of her soul from the convulsing shell on the floor, "Someone call a freaking ambulance!" she hollered furiously as the demons drifted through the sobering crowd still playing their twisted game of tug-of-war. Alex put her fingers on the woman's neck and rested her other hand against the side of her head. She grimaced at the crushing pain rolling back and forth through the woman and felt something slide out of herself as the body on the floor passed to stillness. The eyes looked into hers with a fleeting instance of gratitude as the woman left the world and her body gave up its last breath to a lingering demon that cackled into Alex's face before returning to its own host.

_I guess this is why I came out tonight…damnit!_ she thought angrily as one of the barflies joined her at the woman's side, "Do you know CPR?" he asked.

Alex nodded and went along with the charade, she took up position for chest compressions while he did the breathing until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over the exercise in futility.

The bar remained a subdued place for the rest of the evening after the paramedics left with the woman's corpse in their possession. Alex looked up into the faces of her co-workers who were eyeing her as if she were the one who'd just died.

"What?" she asked walking back to the table where she sat for a minute, drank her shot, rubbed her aching forearms and took a few swallows of beer.

"You alright?" Mel asked.

"Uh huh,"

"You sure?"

"Yeah, it wasn't me that died," she shrugged frowning at the mystified look that passed between her co-workers. She stood up, finishing her beer and swinging her purse over her shoulder, "Look… I don't know about you guys but I'm beat… I'll see y'all on Monday…" and she walked out, _Hey at least she's not gonna get used by a demon… I wonder how many levels of them there are…_she contemplated and shrugged once more as she pulled out onto the street and headed home, the driving beat of Pink's Numb pulsing through the car as she pulled onto the expressway heading toward the city.

_Thank God it's the weekend… maybe by Sunday night I'll be able to get a good nights sleep again… _she thought hopefully and stood blankly on the sidewalk at the end of her block. She wasn't quite ready to go home yet and it was late enough that she shouldn't run into too many people if she just took a little walk.

--

She looked at her watch then out at the black water of Lake Michigan. _2:30… not so bad… shhhhh_ she told her mind and listened to the quiet lapping of small ripples against the rocks she sat on. _I don't understand why all this…I don't understand why I'm the only one who sees these things! I can't be the only person who sees strange things… unless I'm just nuts… heh, yeah man but I'm a functional nut job…maybe I should try again…maybe I should just give up…_and she thought about all the crackpots who'd e-mail her, all the freaks, psychos, stalkers and generally mentally ill people who'd swear they had regular conversations with Abraham Lincoln, or Teddy Roosevelt, or even a telepathic connection to some obscure alien race living in the Crab Nebula. Then there were the teenagers, those kids who had genuine need of a friend or confidante and would go to almost any length to get that, including pretending to be haunted. The last time she'd put out word that she was seeking others with similar 'abilities' was two years ago. She'd gotten thousands of correspondences, including several invitations from institutions for examination and measuring of her psi, none of which she'd accepted, but out of all those correspondents, she'd found one who could describe some of the things Alex herself had lived her whole life seeing.

They'd talked on line frequently for several months, and finally gotten to the point where they'd given each other their actual names and the cities they lived in. A few months after that he'd stopped responding to her e-mails and instant messages. About a week after he'd stopped responding she'd received notice that he was no longer part of the instant message service they both used and she'd lost him. To this day she didn't have any idea if he was alive, or if he'd lost it and found himself institutionalized, it was one of his greatest fears he'd often said, or what other turn his life might have taken, in the end she'd forced herself to believe he'd played her. That he'd told her things she wanted to hear until he got tired of the game then changed his identity and probably laughed himself silly regaling his friends with tales of some freak in the Midwest who thought she saw extra-dimensional beings. Alex had been despondent for weeks, not having realized just how deeply she'd hungered for contact with someone, anyone at least a little like her.

All this brought her back to the same question, _Why me?_ She opened the back zipper of her purse and pulled out a spiral notebook and pen. Sure it was dark out but there was enough light from the streetlamps shining up on the sidewalk for her to jot down a bit about tonight.

She dated the next open line on the most recently used page and began her entry:

"_Went out with the girls tonight…didn't want to really but had that compulsion…then a woman died at the bar. I helped her transition… just enough to keep anything from taking over her body and using it…I hate the way it leaves me feeling, just a little more cold, a little more empty every time…I never asked for this, I never wanted it, so why is it that I can't just be left alone? I need to try again and find out of there's anyone else like me out there… after Jeremy though I'm scared… I can admit that here…the girls looked at me like I'm a freak…so what's new? I can't take the loneliness much longer…I used to think all I wanted was a job and a place of my own where I didn't have to deal with people, where I could hide from them and not see their demons feeding on them… but knowing what I know now…there has to be others out there…there has to be some way to… I don't know… fill me up again…if not I don't have much longer… every second that ticks by just tears another shank of my soul, turning it gray and empty… I don't have much more time to waste, I feel it…" _

She closed the notebook and wiped her eyes wondering where that catharsis had come from, it wasn't what she'd intended to write, it wasn't at all what she'd wanted to do, which was list the pros and cons of putting her feelers out again. Instead she'd found her subconscious taking over, just like it did when she was in situations when her solace was called for. She wouldn't have walked over to that woman of her own volition, she wouldn't have given her anything other than sympathy as she watched her die, but it hadn't been up to Alex, it was never her choice. Not since she was a kid and thought her well of empathy was a magical vessel that would continually fill no matter how much of herself she gave. She didn't realize back then that the pattern she'd established out of an innocent desire to ease the suffering of another had programmed her in a way no one could have anticipated.

Her body suddenly felt leaden. She looked into the dark water below her feet and wondered if she slipped into it, would she sink? or would she float? _Go home Alex, change into your pj's, slide into bed and let yourself sleep…you'll figure out what to do in the morning. _She told herself gently and pushed the notebook back into its pocket then rose and started the trek back to her apartment feeling as if something were about to breech the horizon and perhaps show her a path she hadn't realized existed.

--

The leaves blanketing the path were slick with cold autumnal rain. They shifted precariously beneath her feet threatening to throw her to the ground as she ran, with her pursuer's heavy footfalls vibrating the ground behind her.

Alex gasped, daring a glance over her shoulder and knew that if she stopped to search the emptiness behind her she'd never escape. The part of her that was almost always aware told her she was dreaming, it was okay to stop running and face what was back there, but her instincts told her otherwise.

_Please stop… just leave me alone…_she thought with the tearful inner voice of the child she'd once been. In all the years that this particular nightmare had haunted her, she'd never been able to let herself stop running. She'd never been so tired before either, tired of running, of being scared, tired of being the prey, tired of the futility of her own life.

As her foot splashed into a pool of icy cold standing water she felt her balance shift and her hands came out before her. Air huffed from her chest as she landed on the rough plank board flooring of the cabin she found herself within, her palms were stabbed deep with large heavy splinters and she held back a small cry of pain as she peered out of the crack in the closet door. She always wound up in the closet, always peering through that very same crack, at that very same broad man with the horror-movie chef's knife in his hand who sought, and always found her.

His fingers locked into her hair dragging her out into the empty room and just as he always did, he lifted her off the floor holding her by the hair before the ever shifting face she could never see. _Yep… there's the flash of light off the blade… I wonder where the light comes from… yep here it comes… ouch! Yep that still hurts… and yep again, and again, and again… come on Alex! Wake up huh? How many times do you want him to stab you tonight before you let yourself wake up? Huh? Come on now… oh hell I lost count already… son of a bitch… well my pants are getting heavy with blood… that's a lot of stabbing tonight… what're you doing this for? What're you letting him do this to you…_

_WAKE UP!_

Her eyes opened and her breath hitched out with a sob. She scanned the room as she always did when the dream allowed her to wake, with wide frightened eyes that thought every shadow or hushed flutter of the drapes in the breeze was there to steal her life away.

_Please tell me it's still only Friday night…_ she looked at the clock across the room, the red LED's shining almost malevolently. She blinked hard clearing the sleep from her eyes and read the time, 5:32_ and still dark out… good… question is can I get back to sleep or should I just take a nap later?_ she rolled over and hesitantly moved aside the sheer fabric of her drape, the neighborhood was eerily quiet for this time of morning so just as she decided to get up and start the coffee a shiver shook her from head to toe, forcing her to cocoon herself in her blankets until apparently she'd shivered herself back to sleep.

--

please R&R.


	3. Chapter 3

Hollow Chpt 3.

by: J.A. Carlton

--

_Oh God not again please… let me get clear… please…_Jeremy Stebbe groaned inside his head. He could've sworn sometimes the groaning actually escaped him but that usually meant that he felt something. He wasn't so sure this time but at least he was aware enough to know they were coming for him. _I can't remember the last time I felt anything… the needle stick, the restraints, anything besides the sparkly numbness…wow I'm oddly coherent today…great… say goodbye to a moment of clarity…_he warned as his orderly and nurse came in. The orderly stood guard while she administered the shot, but it had been a long time since he'd last fought the meds. It had been a long time since he'd fought anything including the gray-black smoky apparitions that now came to him as well. They didn't used to come to him, just hung around everyone else and tormented him by sucking them dry bit by bit knowing there was nothing he could do to stop them.

Now he had one of his very own. True it wasn't his exclusively, but it was coming more often now and staying longer before it abandoned him for a taste of someone different in this self contained smorgasbord.

_Ooh look at that…_ he noticed a glint of light off the fine gauge needle coming for his arm, _wasn't there someone once… someone I used to know?_ he wondered watching that fine steel sink into his skin a nifty little trick of physics. A fleeting thought of the serum sliding between electrons and atoms and somehow managing to bypass his bloodstream flashed him as it ran through his mind and dodged out the stage door back into the darkness it came from. For Jeremy Stebbe though, he'd just created a moment of his own reality and in just a couple more hours he'd begin to remember things he wasn't responsible for forgetting.

_Bye now… don't come back any time soon…_he thought watching his keepers leave and chuckled inside his head, though once again, the sound neglected to escape him. For that much, he'd eventually be glad.

--

Another shadow flickered to her lower right and yet again, her eyes chased it, and yet again she huffed a chuckle to herself but quickly returned to her files and the book at hand.

Alex had spent the majority of the weekend moving between researching extra-dimensional creatures, creatures of mythology; and cryptozoology, and trying to figure out exactly how to phrase her latest ads and posts. She'd set up four more user names for her e-mail account and posted various ads on twelve different boards. She'd be busy for the next few weeks that much was certain, once the e-mails started coming in. She'd also penned a couple different ads for the local papers with a P.O. Box she'd kept since the last time she'd done this. All that was left was to wait for the ads to drop and the letters to start coming in.

So, knowing the hardest part of her plan was already behind her, she spent a great deal of time cross referencing her database and creating profiles on many of the creatures and beings she'd either seen for herself or that seemed more plausible inasmuch as any of the creatures she saw were plausible at all.

_Some day maybe this'll mean something… somewhere._

The shadow flitted through her field of vision once more, this time though she didn't look at it and it stopped and stood still at the periphery of her vision. Alex took a breath and felt her heart take off a bit harder. _Well this isn't a good sign…_she thought focusing her eyes straight ahead though her attention was on the Wee one. He knew it too and moved slowly toward the center of her field of vision.

"Yeah I see you…" she whispered.

He/it took another step and her concentration was hard pressed to remain on the screen before her rather than to look directly at it.

"What?" she asked softly, hesitantly.

He took another step. He was about two feet tall, lean and muscular and just a little knobby around the joints, and he was covered with curly coarse hair over porcelain cream skin. She could see his face was both flat and somehow angular, almost as if it were two dimensional, not even his wooly beard and long dark hair could disguise the odd mix of squashed point-y-ness. There was what appeared to be a loin cloth slung across his hips and she wasn't sure but she thought he might even be showing signs of arousal, _Great he's probably a boob guy… and I'm betting the females of his species don't grow 'em quite like we do…_He grinned, his lips stretching tight over sharp conical teeth that reminded her of a dolphin or porpoise, she couldn't remember which. Movement caught her eye and she cocked an eyebrow, pressed her lips together and sighed, _Yep, that's a little hard on under there…well… lucky me…_and before she could stop herself, her head turned and her eyes grasped his with almost physical force as she asked once more, "What?"

And he was gone, dashed out of her sight with the same speed they always had. She hadn't even seen a limb move but she caught the image trail. _Copping trails… man freakin' cid got nuthin' on this crap… wonder what he wanted…wonder what kind of kettle of fish I just opened up… ahh to hell with it… I don't care anymore… they know I see 'em they won't leave me alone… to hell with it…_ she got up and made her way into the kitchen where she pulled a juicy red apple from the fridge and sliced it up then put it on a paper plate and left half of it on the table while taking the other half to the computer with her. It would be gone by the time she decided to go to bed. _I'm so damned sick and tired of hiding, and running away, and pretending I don't see these things… I wonder what would happen if I just…I'd wind up with a new permanent address…and this time I think they'd really up the voltage…I'm sure they've come out with some nifty new drugs too that would probably leave me defenseless…Yeah, thanks but no thanks… this isn't like when I was a kid… a little shock therapy, some lithium and you're cured… you're all better… just pretend it works 'cause if you have to stay there much longer you really WILL go nuts… Ssssshhhhhhhhh…_ that other part of her mind soothed and wrapped its arm around the shoulders of her past, guiding it back to its little padded room where she kept it happily locked up like they thought they might have to do to her if she didn't stop talking about the demons. Fortunately she'd gotten the hint and stopped before any permanent damage had been done.

--

By the time she was rubbing the grit out of her eyes and shuffling the path to her bedroom for the night Alex had come to a conclusion of sorts. She would take her vacation time, there were places she'd heard of, places she'd come across in her research that seemed to scream out 'paranormal shit happening here!', and she had to know if she was crazy or not. She also thought she might try and find Jeremy, then decided against it, convincing herself he'd played her and finding out for a fact were two different things.

_Yeah… and if the wee people are asking me to notice them… well that can't be a good sign… it just can't but it's got to be a sign of something… so… I know what happens when I try to avoid or ignore them… let's see what happens when I go charge into their world… let's see how they like it… _she smiled at her bit of exhausted bravado as sleep crept between the sheets with her, wrapping itself into her body and mind with the comfort of a long lost lover who'd just found his way home.

--

Dreams were a varied and tempestuous landscape for Alex, with the exception of the killing nightmare that almost never wavered, all others were very rarely the same in meaning, effect, or quality. It was a land she believed mirrored her life experiences, a place where literally anything was possible, whether she wanted it to be or not.

She felt herself walking down a short set of cement stairs, the walls around her were painted yellow and adobe in style, they were arched and rounded, very soothing and the décor of the wine cellar she'd just entered was unmistakably South Western with strong bold colors it seemed only non-whites could make work together.

Black lacquered wooden racks lay constructed into the yellow adobe walls, their notches filled with bottles of various colors, shapes and sizes. This was one well stocked wine cellar. She felt a smile pull at the corners of her mouth as she veered to the shelves on her left at the far side of the room. Deep yellow light filtered through the stained glass and she wondered briefly if there should be sunlight coming all the way down here at all. Shrugging her question off she moved forward, a patch of gray coming into view on her left as she noticed a small opening with a small staircase in front of it. _It looks like a kiva, but why the stairs?_ she wondered dropping the hand that was hovering over a 12 year old Merlot and turning instead, toward the odd little door.

The nearer she drew to it the more she could see that the wood was ornately decorated with symbols, swirls, colors and images that refused to be recognized in the whole of her consciousness. She knelt on the third step and pressed her hand to the door. It swung easily inward almost as if it were some living thing that expected and had lain waiting for her.

Leaning her head to the side she peered beyond the door into a rounded gray hallway of sorts and though she couldn't believe it, her legs pushed her up the remaining stairs as she entered the tunnel on all fours. She thought it would go on for some tremendous other-worldly distance but in a matter of a dozen yards she found her hands reaching for a bar embedded into the top of the tunnel.

The world she pulled herself into was lit with blue and left a flat styrofoam taste in her mouth. She came out onto the street from what appeared to be a runoff drain and as she took in the litter and debris somehow fluttering even in the stillness of this new landscape it didn't strike her right off the bat what she was seeing. Instead her focus was on the absolute abandonment before and surrounding her.

_No… I don't like this… this isn't good…I need to go back…_ she told herself and turned toward the drain she'd crawled out of but found it sealed. It wasn't as if she'd really expected to be able to return to the world she'd come from but she'd hoped. _Natch… okay… wow it's cold_ she thought feeling as if the heat were being drawn from her. She looked down and groaned finding herself naked, _great! cause this couldn't have gotten much freakier! _she felt her head shake and started moving away from the drain, her feet cold against moist feeling tarmac.

A shock of color seemed to burst into existence on her right catching her attention as if it were motion. She was drawn to it with nearly moth-like single mindedness and as she approached it, her eyes examined the litter around her, paper, leaves, everything was colored blue, the shadows and shapes all the same shade, the delineation that betrayed form a gift of shadow alone, and she began to realize what else she was seeing. _Oh God!_ she groaned inside and pressed her hand to her mouth. An arm lay over there, a severed hand a little further away… a chunk of flesh smeared along the ground just ahead, human tissue waving like paper in the non-existent breeze… every piece of litter that wasn't litter or leaf was a part of a person. _Something's wrong here…Oh really? Cause what it's so natural to see body parts polluting the landscape? There are no torsos, no heads, just limbs and chunks…_she noticed as another shock of color appeared a little further ahead, toward one of the large towering buildings that seemed no more substantial than some cardboard model could be.

The shadows that delineated shape, at first a darker blue with deep gray edges became swatches of red, far too red, far too fresh to be real. _Whatever happened here happened recently… but where are the heads and torsos? Why are there only these parts here? _and her belly trembled as she moved onward, following the patches and streaks of red as they appeared, guiding her toward what end she could not begin to fathom.

--

tbc…

not much further now

but still some distance.

Hope you're liking.

Please R&R.

sifi


	4. Chapter 4

Hollow – chpt 4.

by: J.A. Carlton.

_No Don't!..._ he heard inside his head. With his ears however, he heard the gasp that rushed from his throat. He looked around quickly, his eyes seeing so much more than the drugs had let him know was there. He caught sight of the little gray-black wisp gliding out of the room and knew it had been feeding on him. The trouble was he couldn't remember what it might have been feeding on precisely. He'd had a bad dream, that much was certain, he was trapped in a blue world peppered with limbs and person pieces like a bad blend of Dali done in Warhol's vivid colors with a splash of Pollock's anarchy just for fun. A tremor shook him and he wrapped himself tightly into his blankets wondering how long it'd been since his last shot and how much longer before he was due for his next one.

_I wonder why I'm so clear headed? I haven't felt this lucid in a long time… how long have I been in here? and more importantly… have I been outside yet today?_ he wondered. The memory of daily excursions outside into the sunshine was clear and warming to him. This of course was dependent upon the weather. _I have to get out of here…but I can't let them drug me anymore… how am I going to get them to stop it without fighting? and if I fight they're just going to up the dose… and… no please not that anymore…_ he could feel the fiery numbness that lasted for an unknown and interminable amount of time after shock therapy sessions. He hadn't had one in a long time and that was a true blessing, nor did he want to go through it again. He closed his eyes and thought hard, trying with everything he had to remember what had been going through his mind when the nurse last came in to give him the poison that kept him malleable.

As he wondered grasping for the information, the images he hoped would help him ward off the effects of his next medication he began to drift back to sleep, deep into the blue world where he felt himself comfortably hidden in the depths of a different consciousness, buried deep in the body of a woman he thought he might know, or might have known once. Or maybe it was just in a dream that he knew her. Still, it was better than being prisoner in this asylum.

--

_Something's not right here…yeah you keep saying this but what can be right about limbs scattered like leaves? I don't want to see this…_ she acknowledged but walked toward one of the limbs in the street, it looked like it had been run over by a truck, in fact she could almost see tire tracks in the flesh and her brow furrowed. _This is sooo weird…_ she looked around, the city, its buildings, its sidewalks and streets, the lamps, trashcans, everything right down to the parking meters all looked like they should, aside from the blue of course… _No! Your blueness…_ she thought wishing she was on her couch watching the blue meanies trying to take over Pepperland… _but there's no vehicles… nothing parked, no busses, trains, trucks… not even a single stinking bicycle! and yet… yeah… I can almost see the tread marks in the skin… thank God for forensic shows! _and she looked around for something to get hold of the limb with, a piece of newspaper or something. She looked down wondering if some clothing had materialized yet and caught a glimpse of something shiny against her skin. _What the hell?_ she wondered and realized her belly button was pierced and had a really cool… thingy…decorating it. _Yeah cause I'm so the belly button piercing kind… it is pretty cool though… maybe I should get mine pierced when I wake up… huh… nah…_ but other than that she was still naked.

_Ah to hell with it… it's just a dream anyway… I think…_she thought grimacing and biting hard on her bottom lip as she grasped the limb by the spongy and fresh fleshiness of the hand, wrapping her fingers around it and lifting it off the ground. There was a strange 'scheeoup' feeling more than sound that moved through her as she pried it from the blue tarmac and felt the skin peeling away, _Eew, ew, eeewwwWHA!_ she moaned inside but soon she was holding the limb and long habit forced her to get off the street, well long habit and the sight of tread marks despite the lack of motor vehicles present, _Something ran this over,_ she felt wet splash against her leg and looked down to see vivid rose red running out of the elbow portion of the limb, some splashing on her leg.

She shifted her grip and held it further away from her while trying to get a better look, but with everything the same color, detail was hard to come by. Gritting her teeth she ran her hand over the extremity and nodded confirming what she knew. The arm was covered in thick wooly hair and yet it was substantially smaller than her own. _One of the wee people? Are these Wee people parts? How? Why?_ and an even more disturbing thought came to her then, _What if I'm not dreaming per se… what if I'm in the Wee People's world? They've never really let me look at them before, none of them has ever stopped and got my attention through stillness…what if…oh God what if something is terribly wrong here? What if this IS their world? What could I do? This is…_ she felt her heartbeat picking up in her chest and her breath coming short in her throat as blue started to creep up her hands from her fingertips, spreading slowly along the extremities of her skin toward her core.

In the pit of her belly she could sense the truth though she couldn't bring herself to face it just yet. Something was horribly wrong in this world and they were crying out for the one person they knew could see them. They needed help but she had no idea what she could do, if anything. _This is too big… that can't be right… it's a dream, that's all… I have to be wrong, PLEASE I HAVE to be wrong…what if I'm right? What if there's something in their world… God only knows what these things can do… if the demons can steal souls and…animate dead bodies… who's to say these guys can't…I don't know…NO… No! I won't let it! It can't mean that if I don't want it to… _but she knew she was trying to fool herself.

In this angled perspective on reality she could feel her head shaking, this was too big for her to handle. If she was right she needed information, she needed to know about this world of theirs, this extra dimension and if there was something that had caused this horrible rain of parts, "I can't!" she felt her mouth call out and sat bolt up right in her bed clutching the sheets to her chest, her eyes delving deep into dark brown pools of liquid sadness. She gasped and jerked backward but to her amazement, the wee one stood his ground on her bed and this time did not flee.

"Uhh… no…" she pleaded in a small voice while shaking her head though her eyes were filling with tears.

Even in the darkness she could see his eyes were also full, communicating his heart rending sadness in the most universal of ways. He opened his mouth and she thought she heard the sound of rushing water, then he closed it again and looked around the bed, his gaze on the floor, making Alex look even though a split second before she did, she knew what she'd see.

_Oh my God… they're really here… _she could see half a dozen of the wee people and though every nerve was stretched as tight as it could go, she felt herself stiffen and become completely unable to move though not from anything they might have done as they climbed lithely onto her bed and stood before her. Their expressions belied their pain. Her instincts had been right. Something in their world had gone horribly wrong and they needed help.

"But I can't do anything… I don't know the first thing about your world! Beside that it's blue!... I'm not a fighter… and honestly… you guys know me well enough… I'm a chickenshit!..." she protested but cocked her head to the side as the one she figured was the leader came forward, a plea for his people plain to see.

Alex caved.

"We're gonna have to find a way to communicate cause that… rushing water thing you do… that doesn't cut it… but you understand me don't you?" she asked.

He nodded once and all around her, the murmur of a thick stream filled her bedroom as the others seemed to communicate their relief and, she sensed a kind of faith in her. _Oh man… what if I let them down? They need a hero, not a…a…tin man…_

--

"…well can you _draw_ it?" she asked and demonstrated by drawing a smiley face on the corner of a piece of paper. So far they hadn't been having much luck, the wee leader was trying hard. They'd spent at least the last two hours online looking at sketches and renderings of mythical creatures, devils and demons in the hopes of finding the one that had perpetrated such a horrible massacre on his people. Unfortunately none of the images they'd found were ones that were familiar to him, and Alex came to understand that part of the problem was that most of these things were never locked into a standard appearance, though in many cases they apparently did have favorite ones they assumed.

The Wee leader got the point but frowned upon picking up the pencil. He called to one of the others who were all sifting through the books on her dining table. She was impressed with the care they took, and respect they showed to the tomes she'd collected over the years. On the dining table stood rows and rows of hard to find copies and a few insanely rare original works, all of which dealt with realms and beings and the existence of other worlds and worldly creatures. The labyrinth of bookcases that propped each other up and occasionally lost shelves due to the weight of her collection was her biggest weakness. Anything she found that she hadn't or wasn't sure if she'd seen before was subject to purchase so long as it seemed to hold something new, something that might somehow one day tell her why she'd been born the way she was. What purpose her ability to see what she could, might possibly serve. So far she hadn't had much luck finding those answers, but she never stopped looking.

This wee one was another male who approached smiling gratefully and bowed just a bit before her. Instinctively Alex bowed her head at him and motioned him to join her on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. He listened to the leader and nodded his head taking the pencil and sliding the paper in front of himself. He thought for a moment, the eraser tapping gently against the tip of his pointed nose then put the graphite tip to the paper and began to sketch. It took several minutes before he adapted properly to the instrument, it either popped out of his hand or snapped under the pressure he applied, but once he got it just right his motion against the paper was a flurry of developing image in varying shades of gray so precise and artful she found it stunning.

There was something childlike in the little warrior's pose as he smiled shyly and presented her with the rendering of the being that had brought war into their world. Alex looked at him with a gentle smile and couldn't help herself, she cupped his cheek drawing a gasp and grin from him as she looked down and felt her skin crawl. The paper had several different images on it, one or two were conceptually recognizable creatures, another three were distinctly human visages all with one distinguishing feature that betrayed the nature of the inhabitant, and the last few were something she couldn't wrap her mind around except to say amorphous as the first descriptor that leaped to her lips.

At the window side of the dining table she squeezed in between a couple wee warriors who shifted their attention to her, watching carefully exactly what she did as she put the picture into the scanner. Step by step she showed them how she was doing what she was doing, even though she was relatively certain they had a very limited understanding of English or computers or any other technology, she didn't know why she felt that way since they'd been around her all her life, but either way. She showed them how to scan the picture, how to access the internet and how to upload it on a few message boards with instruction to use one of her 'ad' e-mail addresses if anyone could tell her the name of any of the creatures represented in the picture. She then isolated each image and started the computer searching the whole of the internet for any information possible.

She leaned back, her head throbbing and her eyes burning in the late hours. She rose and looked at the leader, "I have to work tomorrow… you know that place I go all day… you've been there…" he nodded, "…so I'm going to bed… you guys help yourself to anything you need okay?"

The leader bowed curtly then spoke to two of his warriors who escorted her to the bedroom and were obviously supposed to stand guard over her. A fact which did nothing to set her at ease regarding this whole situation, in fact, if she let herself feel what was demanding attention, she wondered why she was going to bother going into work at all.

_Because I might be wrong?_ she thought sliding back between the sheets, _yeah… okay ostrich, you just go ahead and stick you head in the sand there and ignore what you know, SOMETHING IS COMING! You just screwed yourself so royally by agreeing to help them…I have to try…there's so little left of me anyway what does it really matter? _the inner voice had no come back. It lay quiet inside her mind for the time being, but it had been right and she knew it, but she was moreso and she knew that too.

--

Jeremy couldn't remember feeling so alive ever before. He still had no idea how exactly he'd managed to overcome the effects of the drugs they'd kept him so full of, but he wasn't looking this particular gift horse in the mouth. That they'd turned their back on him, thinking him pliant and nearly catatonic at just the right moment was also a blessing. He'd slipped away much like the little gray and black demons, unnoticed by those around him and once in the parking lot he'd quickly found the car that belonged to the keys he'd lifted from an orderly and driven out without a hitch. _What else could go right? Okay… now where did she say she lived? Chicago? Ahhh Hog Butcher of the World… here I come Chi-Town! Ready or not._

--

When Alexandra Bentley awoke in the morning, the sight of the two tireless wee warriors at the foot of her bed made a decision for her. She did the one thing she hadn't done since the day she started her job. Alexandra Bentley called in sick, and said she also hedged her bet for the following day as well. She needed time to do some research, and she needed to be able to focus.

She couldn't say exactly what had made up her mind, but somewhere during her sleeping hours she'd come to realize the belief, that whatever had happened in the realm of the wee people was only the start of something. Whatever it was, it was the kind of something that could bleed through to her world, and if it did that and she could've found information or ally, or some means of deterring this threat then missing a couple days of work was going to be really so very NOT important.

The warriors looked at her and nodded approvingly as she rose and shooed them out of the room so she could get dressed. _Why that even matters I have no clue… oh man… whatever… _she thought frustrated and looked over her shoulder, "Can you… nevermind I'll be right out," she shook her head smiling and closed the door behind them. The images drifting through her mind like so much ash were a jumbled mess of fear and desperation. Those pictures the warrior had drawn the night before had settled hard into her mind, a couple of the human-esque countenances in particular that made her think she might have seen one or two of them at one time or another. She couldn't be sure, but there was someone who might be able to help her.

Alex tossed on her favorite pair of worn old jeans that were soft as butter, then put on her Tweety-bird t-shirt and slid into her gym shoes, not the newer ones that weren't quite broken in yet, but the ones that had that bit of sole that flapped off the ground with each step. At the tiny spot on the dining table that was reserved for the computer she quickly checked her e-mail boxes for any response to the queries she'd put out regarding the pictures. She smiled tentatively noting half a dozen hits and took a deep breath to steady herself before opening the first one.

Whoever had sent the e-mail had done so anonymously, they'd copied one of the human-ish pictures and written a glaring, vicious red scream to, "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"Well that's not good…" she shook her head and looked at the shaking and empathetic head on her left. The wee ones were watching intently, three to a chair on either side of her while the leader leaned against the wall behind her so he could get a look at the screen.

She opened the next one, "Sorry… Never saw anything like these before…Thai sources…Looks kinda Thai to me…" this response highlighted the two amorphous ones.

The next one was labeled 'barkeepsupreme' and it was a photograph of a charcoal sketch that was hanging on a wall in a bar, and it matched one of the human faces almost exactly. "This was purchased at a Gallery in Pennsylvania… the artist is locally cited as a purveyor of 'images that stick with you' I call 'em Haunting… but this one struck me for some reason. The woman who did the drawing is also a sketch artist for the police…if you're ever in the area… come on in and take a look, the picture doesn't do it justice.

Silas… yes that's really my name…."

and he'd followed it up with an address in a small town about three hours away called Galena. Alex hit reply and typed quickly.

Thankfully Silas appeared to be a computer junkie. He responded to her query almost instantly with the name and address of the woman who'd done the drawing. She smiled and wrote the information down as a long series of beeps hit her ears and she leaped to her feet with her eyes on the clock.

"Shit! I gotta move the car!... I'll be right back…" _Damned street cleaners! Seventy five dollar freaking ticket… please don't let them have come through already… it's only five after…._

She flew down the stairs and out the front door, down the walk and fled past the cop who was ticketing a car just a few away from hers. _Please let him have started back there… please let him have started back there…YES! _she grinned slipping her key into the driver door and buckling in. In the rearview mirror the cop was grinning and actually waved to her as she pulled out of her spot and started circling the blocks looking for a safe place to park.

_Lucky lucky lucky little me… _she thought after finding a new spot only a few blocks from the apartment.

She turned her head to the left, and then to the right and frowned. _That's not right… that's bad…what the hell?_ she thought and followed the invisible line between the muzzle of the gun and the man walking down the sidewalk. He was distracted by someone on the other side of the street and didn't see the primer red Monte Carlo approaching from behind him, he didn't see it slowing down and he didn't see the torso that leaned out the window, but she did. She also saw in her minds' eye, another of the golden aura'd people stolen from this world, but what she saw that terrified her and made everything come crystal clear was the image she saw when she looked at the man in the leather coat. She knew it, she felt it, he'd been touched by evil and survived. He'd been chosen and now she knew exactly what her life had been meant to do.

Everything had come to this moment. As she ran across the street, in front of the car, toward the man, the force of her body impacting with his turning them both as the bullet tore through her body from the back, she saw over his shoulder 7 wee warriors watching and nodding their approval. She looked into the stricken face that had just a second ago been in front of her but now seemed to be hovering over her. She looked into a set of beautiful green eyes and touched the man's cheek. She tried to tell him, to explain to him that it was alright now, that he could live because she couldn't anymore, and as she looked into those eyes one last time, she let go her life and gave the last of herself to this sorrowful stranger with a destiny.

--

End.

If you are interested in continuing this story please move to: Legacy… where the saga continues… just from a different perspective.

If you liked, if you didn't please R&R

Thanks. Oh yeah... please excuse type-o's fingers freaky tonight. :D

sifi


End file.
